BJP-JJP loses two of 3 mayoral seats

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 30

A month after thousands of farmers started protests against the new farm laws, the ruling BJP-JJP alliance in Haryana suffered a setback as it lost two of the three mayoral seats and all the three municipal committee president's posts in the elections held on Sunday.

The BJP won in Panchkula where its mayoral candidate Kulbhushan Goyal defeated Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia of the Congress by a slender margin of 2,057 votes.

Former CM and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda's confidant Nikhil Madaan became Sonepat Mayor, defeating Lalit Batra of the BJP by 13,817 votes.

In Ambala, former Union minister Venod Sharma's wife Shakti Rani Sharma (Haryana Jan Chetna Party) emerged victorious, defeating BJP's Vandana Sharma by 8,084 votes. The Congress nominee finished a distant fourth.

The BJP won the lone Rewari municipal council seat where its nominee Poonam Yadav was elected president.

In the municipal committee elections in Sampla, Dharuhera and Uklana, Independents Pooja, Kanwar Singh and Sushil Sahu bagged the top post, beating Sonu (BJP), Maan Singh (JJP) and Mahendra Soni (JJP), respectively. The BJP-JJP won 11 of the 20 municipal councillor seats in Panchkula, 10 of the 20 in Sonepat and eight of the 20 in Ambala.

As the civic polls are generally won by a party that rules the state, the results are being seen as a blow to the coalition government around a year after it assumed power. More so, the BJP had won all the five mayoral posts that went to the polls in December 2018 when only a year of its term was left.

Refusing to accept that the farmers' protests had any impact on the poll outcome, Haryana BJP president OP Dhankar said they had won more wards than the Congress. "Of the seven civic bodies where elections were held, we had our MLAs only in Panchkula and Ambala. Moreover, our candidate won in Rewari, which is represented by the Congress in the Assembly," maintained Dhankar.

Former CM Hooda claimed the mandate was "clearly against the BJP-JJP coalition". State Congress president Kumari Selja said the party had contested the civic polls on its symbol for the first time, which would strengthen it at the grassroots. Venod Sharma too called it a "mandate against the ruling combine".

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